About Us FAQs Interview

The following is a transcript between Christine Nguyen (CN) and JM Ivler (JMI) 12/27/07.

CN: Thank you for taking the time to sit down with me today, I will jump right into the questions. What is EduCAD Learning Solutions, Socratic Tutor, EduCAD-ST and EduCAD-MD?

JMI: EduCAD Learning Solutions is the company that was created to develop applications from the patent Frank Rubin and I developed on Computer Adaptive Diagnostics. Socratic Tutor is the operational company and website that will serve as the portal for access to the application developed from the patent. That application actually has two different development paths. The first is the EduCAD-ST product that will be integrated to socratictutor.com and the second is the EduCAD-MD product that is under development and won’t be released for a while.

CN: What is the difference between the two products?

JMI: Over ten years ago Frank had an idea that he could use the computer to determine what a student coming to Renaissance Kids, his wife and his educational enrichment center, didn’t know in mathematics. Using this computer program he would be able to do a math diagnostic and then, knowing what the student didn’t know, immediately start to tutor them from that point. After he had been developing the idea for a while he brought me on board to handle some of the technology issues and help develop the idea into something that could be built. Together we continued to work on the concepts until we reached a point where we believed we had developed a new way of structuring the curriculum and then we developed a patent of that concept. After we were awarded the patent we moved on to development of a working model, and then we realized that we had actually patented two distinct applications within the same patent. The first application to come out of the patent was the MD or Math Diagnostic. In rough form it proved to require a great deal of detailed hand coding and we felt that was self defeating. As we studied ways to get around the massive amount of database development required we developed a new language to describe math as a series of transitions and transformations between simpler and more complex concepts, or what we described in the patent as primitives. This was the beginning of the development of the ST or Socratic Tutor. At this point we were at version 2 of the development and we decided to branch the two products at this time.

CN You said the MD product will be delayed in release, why?

JMI: Well a portion of the MD product will be part of the ST product, but we felt that the MD product had a more limited market as it only covered one portion of the learning cycle, while the ST product actually covered all three portions of the learning cycle.

CN: What is the learning cycle?

JMI: The learning cycle is actually a core change in the philosophy of education. Today education is done in what we call a learning segment. A child is taught a concept, they then drill the concept and then they are tested on the concept. After that the child is taught a totally different concept that might or might not be related to the concepts they just completed. In math a child might be taught order of operations one week, and the next the lesson may be on fractions addition. That may be followed by a lesson in decimal math using money or even time math which teaches the basics of working in different bases, base 12 and base 60 rather than base 10 as in money. In the learning cycle we start the process with diagnosing what the student knows, and then build up from there. So a student working on fractions addition and subtraction would start with simple addition of positive fractions with like denominators if they were just starting, but the system, through the diagnostic would know that a student may already know that and start the student out with something harder, for instance subtraction of improper fractions with different denominators that results in a negative number. In the learning cycle, after we determine where the starting point is we teach the concepts by allowing the student to see a problem at the diagnosed level and if they don’t know how to resolve it they can step through the problem with each step exposed one at a time with a detailed explanation of what was done to transform the problem to a simpler form. When the student feels comfortable getting to a point where they know the answer they can answer the deconstructed problem. Then we present another problem of the same type until the student can answer that type of problem without going through the step-by-step process. The final step of the learning cycle is to drill the types of problems that the student knows within the area of study. This re-enforces the learning sessions and builds the learned information into a habit.

CN: And this is the ST product.

JMI: At the current time the ST product does this at the most basic level. Again, you have to understand that the version of the product we are releasing in Beta is not a completed product, but version 4 of the product under development. The initial release of the product will not have the diagnostic component fully integrated, and it has only a limited number of areas of study. We are continuing to develop additional features, like adding off-site links that will allow a student to go to other locations on-line where detailed examples and explanations are available on how to resolve the exact type of problem they are working on. Additionally, there are points of transition in solving a problem where a student can make a choice of taking two paths to the next step of transition. For instance in a problem where an improper fraction is being subtracted and the student has to convert two different denominators to a common denominator they have the option after subtracting of reducing the fraction before or after turning the fraction into a proper fraction. In a future version of the ST application the student will be asked which way they should proceed before we actually take the next step. In some cases there is a better way and a less better way to go, and if a student chooses to take the less better path we can then use that as an opportunity to explain why the other transformation would be a better choice.

CN: So, you wouldn’t call the ST product mature at this point?

JMI: There was a great deal of discussion between Frank, Kevin Korach who is the software developer and myself on this issue. In the alpha test of version 4 against a small group of students we were able to see how well the current version, with all of the features we want to have in but have not added yet, was able to help them. So, the question was one of “Do we hold back release until we add all of the features, or do we get this useful product out to the public now and add additional features throughout the Beta?” As you can tell, we choose the later course of action. This means that we will be rolling out new features to the product throughout the Beta test period.

CN: The Beta test version is free and you are obviously planning on selling the final product…

JMI: Let me clarify something here. We anticipate, expect, that the product will undergo a number of changes throughout the Beta test process. In addition to the ideas that Frank, Kevin and I have for the product direction, we also know that the Beta users will have insights that they will share with us that will include features that we never considered. So, your use of the term “final product” is a misnomer. We see this product undergoing continuous development and enhancement for the entire lifetime of the product. We know just a small portion of the feature set that EduCAD-ST will have in say two years because we expect to be learning from the user community and adding features that they want and need, but that we never considered. So while there will be a point when we go from free to paid mode, I don’t want anyone to get the idea that the product is going to be finalized at that point, the product will just be at a stable point in the lifecycle development, call it version 5, and we have many plans to enhance the product well beyond that release point.

CN: So people who have purchased the product will see continued enhancements?

JMI: They can count on it.

CN: Have you determined how the product will be priced?

JMI: We have not determined a price point for the product at this time. We have determined that we will be selling it on a subscription basis and Frank, Kevin and I have all agreed that we want the product to be priced at a point where cost shouldn’t be an issue for most people. In other words, people can rest assured that the cost for a student will be far less than the cost of one Starbucks Vente coffee per week.

CN: Is there any one thing you would like to say that I haven’t covered in closing?

JMI: I guess this is where I should give my elevator pitch on how we believe that this product will change the face of education, but I won’t go there. I would like to ask people to get on to the Beta test; take the product for a test drive. Tell us what you like and don’t like. And if you like what you see, please, help us make the product better by telling others about it. The more people that we have on the product, using it, pushing it to its limits and giving us feedback, the better we can help meet the needs of not only their child, but every other child that will use EduCAD-ST.

CN: Thank you for your time.

JMI: Thank you for yours. It was a pleasure and I look forward to being able to do it again with you in a few months when I can tell you how we have updated the product based on Beta user feedback.